1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to providing information services and in particular to a method and apparatus for providing integrated location-based information services from a plurality of sources to a remote mobile subscriber unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an age of ever-expanding information resources, such resources provide useful and potentially vital information for reliable and accurate decision making. At the same time, society is increasingly mobile, with people spending more and more time traveling to and from their offices, homes, and other destinations, usually in their automobiles or other forms of transportation.
A plethora of information resources and increasing mobility presents some unique problems in providing information services. When mobile, access to important information services may be effectively cut off, often when the information is needed most. Also, the information provided is often location-sensitive, that is, dependent upon the location of the requester or the subject of the request. In such instances, the location of the requester or subject must be determined, or the effectiveness of the information provided may be limited. For example, a person driving in a car may be lost and want directions to the nearest open gasoline station. If the location of the requester is unknown, step-by-step directions cannot be provided. Also, if the distance between the gas station and the requestor is unknown, the system may direct the person to a gas station which closed before the person arrives.
Further, an information request often requires access to data from a number of independent and sometimes conflicting sources for the same information. When this occurs, the information service provider must pre-process the information before providing it to the requestor, or the requestor will be confronted with conflicting and contradictory information. This problem is especially onerous for mobile requesters, because the requester may be simultaneously operating an automobile and unable to examine and resolve conflicts in the information. While these conflicting mobile information sources may be resolved and fused at a central location or at the mobile unit, the mobile units cannot easily perform the task because they typically do not have the necessary processing, storage, or data capabilities. Further, providing all relevant data sources to the mobile unit is infeasible, since this would unduly load the communication channels between the service provider and the mobile units.
Fusing information at a central location is also not without its difficulties, requiring human intervention, or requiring excessive processing power and memory. Further this problem intensifies as the number, scope and size of each of the information service databases grows, as they inevitably do over time.
The system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,812,843, issued Mar. 14, 1989 to Champion et al., discloses providing information to mobile users, but does not customize this information to the requestor's measured location. Champion also cannot provide step-by-step directions to someone who does not know their location or provide location-based information or generate commands regarding another mobile user.
The system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,343,493, issued Aug. 30, 1994 to Karimullah, discloses determining the location of the requester using multilateration, but relies on a cellular phone link to deliver the information. The system disclosed measures the location of the requester, but only to select the cellular telephone network site that is used to deliver the information, not to customize the information delivered or to supply fused data. Also, Karimullah does not disclose providing location-based commands.
The system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,516, issued Nov. 15, 1994 to Jandrell, discloses using a paging response channel to provide information and obtaining the location of a mobile unit by multilateration, but does not disclose providing information services customized to the requestor's location or the subject of the request.
Accordingly, there is a need for providing location-sensitive information services to mobile users that require access to multiple and potentially conflicting sources of data. The present invention provides fused location-based information services by using the measured location of the requesting unit and the subject of the request to identify the data of interest. In doing so, irrelevant conflicts are avoided, greatly simplifying the process.
There also exists a need to send commands to or obtain information from subscribers which are customized to conform to their measured location. For example, an ambulance dispatcher may want to send a request for status or provide commands to ambulances within a radius of one mile of a reported accident. Or, similarly, a parent may want to send a message to their child to return home, but only if they are not already within a 10 mile radius or in motion towards home. The present invention fulfills this need by providing location-based information and command services from multiple information sources.